


Just Drive

by lovehugsandcandy



Category: Ride or Die (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22881475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovehugsandcandy/pseuds/lovehugsandcandy
Summary: School is not where Ellie wants to be.
Relationships: Colt Kaneko/Main Character (Ride or Die)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

When she’s feeling stifled, she drives.

She doesn’t drive far, not the 2,990 miles she can calculate in her head, can recite rote formulas with the hours she has spent mentally working the miles and feet and minutes and hours, but she drives.

It’s easy to feel caged here. Almost as soon as she pulled into campus, she dove into her studies, hitting the library before she unpacked her last suitcase. In high school, she was determined to be the best. Over the summer, she was determined to fill every moment of free time so she didn’t need to think, didn’t need to feel. (She was terrified that, if she stopped, even for an instant, the grief would wash over her, less a wave than a deluge, sudden and unrelenting, with a force that would drag her under and leave her reeling for days.) Now, she has settled into a routine, classes and books and calculations that provide some comfort during the dark nights when she longs to be free.

_80 times 11 is 880._

But she still needs to get away, sometimes, away from the books and the homework and the people, every one of them determined to be the best, determined to leave behind pieces of their own past. (It seemed like everyone on campus had something they were running from, family drama or rough neighborhoods or just the weight of their own expectations. She has something she is desperate to run back to, if only it didn’t mean giving up everything else she worked towards for years.)

The highway is just a smear of grey. Everything is washed out, dull, the concrete her tires roll over, the sky dimmed by clouds, even the trees stretching spindly fingers towards the heavens. The car is an extension of herself by now, steering wheel molded to her fingertips, gear shift fitting her palm so precisely that she swears she can see her lifeline etched in rubber if she looks closely enough. Shifting is second nature, the delicate balance between her feet practiced, easy. Changing lanes is a glance behind her before the car glides over, almost following her thoughts as if they shared a brain.

Her assumptions might be off. She tries again. _75 times 10 is 750. Not fast enough._

People drive fast here in the Northeast. She keeps it right at 80, flying past cars in the right lane as if they were stock still, but slow enough that the Staties don’t give her a second glance.

She calculates as she drives. _2,990 divided by 750 is almost 4. Not short enough._

Sometimes she drives south, past the traffic and water towers, to the straightaway at the beach where the tuners will race, late Saturday nights, when the clam shacks are dead and she is a blur of pink flying to the marina. When the races are over, she sits and watches the expensive cars heading to the ritzy condos. Her fingers itch to swipe a set of keys. She thinks of a boy who would lift these luxury vehicles without an inch of guilt. Her heart aches.

Sometimes she drives north. The highway narrows to rotaries as she goes as far as she can, flying around the curves, body leaning with the car as she pulls out to the exits. This is one of the places where the rich people from the city come on vacation, where they come to get away. She knows where she wants to get away to.

Sometimes she stays in the city, drives to where she can see the planes takeoff, landing so close to the ocean it feels like they will sink into the horizon. She knows that wanted criminals can’t get through security. No one on these planes will come for her. It hurts.

She never drives west. If she did, she doesn’t think she would stop until the road ended, dropping into a deep blue expanse in the land of opportunity and street tacos and boys with fire in their eyes and ice in their veins.

2,990 miles. 750 miles a day. 3.386666 days, where the six repeats forever, trailing into eternity like the horizon and like the pain and like her love. 

She misses street tacos.

She misses other things about LA more.

Maybe she should just call it 4 days. Enough time to travel 2,990 miles, stop to pick up tacos and a boy, and then go, just drive, when they both feel stifled and want to run, from the weight of their expectations, from the cops, from the pain, just drive.

Just drive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe LA's not where Ellie wants to be either.

She makes it to LA at 2am.

It’s not unheard of for her to be up this late, schoolwork and studying taking up far more time than they ever did in high school, but it’s 5am back east and she never adjusted to the time difference. She started driving at 7am and, when she hit Vegas at 10pm local time, it made sense to drive through, to push on and keep the car to the right of the yellow line and drive. Just drive.

_281 divided by 80 is 3.5. 3.5 hours, 210 minutes, 12,645 seconds._

She endures every single one of them as she travels, eyes on the yellow line, sunk so deeply into the leather that it feels like a hug, fabric wrapping around her limbs and pulling her into its sleepy embrace.

She is exhausted, body weak and sore, but her mind so overtired that it ends up in overdrive, one fragmented thought bleeding into the next. The car navigates itself outside her father’s house. The windows are dark, eerily still, but the old cruiser is parked in the driveway; she sits, taking comfort from the stillness for a moment, before she eases the car into first gear and glides away. She stops at Riya’s house next. Her best friend isn’t home from Oakland but it seemed appropriate to visit, as she recalls the hours spent here when she was young and the time more recently when she was in hiding. 

Her mind is slowing, her eyelids becoming heavier when drooping and harder to raise, so she continues on to her last stop. _3.7 miles is 17,000 feet_. Her brain stumbles. She blinks. That’s wrong. _3.7 is 19,000 feet, 19,536 feet to be exact, over 200,000 inches._ She is tired, and the car is tired, and, even though she can’t think as quickly as she would like to, she knows these streets like the back of her hand, on her way to a boy she knows even better than these streets.

She parks by the curb. Gramercy Park is deserted, only the rustle of paper and wrappers spinning in the breeze as accompaniment. She clambers out of the car, unfurling tight muscles to lean against the body and study the building. It looks worlds different from when she last saw it, flame licking up the wood and turning it to ash. Now, the walls are back up, roof solid over the shop floor; even though the streetlights’ glow is faded here, she can see that the exterior has been freshly painted, etched sign above the door proudly back in place. 

She is distracted, wondering if the rebuilding of the interior has rebuilt any of the memories lay buried here, when the door opens. He looks tired, dark streaks under his eyes, feet bare as they edge out past the doorway. 

“You coming in?” It was probably survival instinct by now, to listen for the roar of an unfamiliar engine, to wake up at the sound of a vehicle slowing.

“Yeah.” She pushes off the hood. “I’m coming in.”

It’s the best sleep she’s had in months. Maybe it’s because she hadn’t slept in 19 hours, and her body collapsed. Maybe it’s because she was finally back in the one place she had been desperate for since she drove east, 2,990 miles, striving for a future that might not have a place for her anymore.

They wake up and get donuts, perched across a circular table ( _a foot and a half, 18 inches, 18 inches is far too far_ ) and she swipes powdered sugar across his lip as an excuse to touch. She kisses it off as he crowds her against the pink paint of her car ( _no inches, no inches, finally, the perfect distance is no distance_ ) and she sighs chocolate-glazed happiness into the seam of his mouth.

His lips are still against hers when he speaks. “What are you doing here, Ellie?”

“Let’s go. Let’s just go.”

His thumb traces slow circles around her hip bone. “What?”

“Let’s leave, just get out of here. You and me.”

“Go where?” 

“Anywhere. Anywhere we want.”

“I’m not running.”

“It’s not running,” she insists. “We won’t be running from anything. We just…can’t we run to something instead?”

“Like what?”

“Just…” She pulls him closer and her voice takes on a desperate pitch. She would be embarrassed if her bones weren’t heavy with the four days of driving that it took to get here, if her mind weren’t heavy with the need to take him and run, as far as they could, so the schoolwork and the fear and the past would fade into the rear view. “Just something better than here.”

He studies her, eyes dark underneath pitch-black lashes, inscrutable and silent, and takes a step back. “Ok.” She doesn’t have time to mourn the loss, skin cooling from where his body heat sent blazing trails through lips and limbs, before he is walking around the car to duck into the passenger seat.

“Really?”

He shrugs. “Drive.”

“Can we get tacos?” she asks hopefully.

His smirk is the only answer she needs. Maybe this, this car, this boy, this freedom...maybe this is all she needs. He shakes his head at her. “Just drive.”


End file.
